Scientific Racism In Germany Essay, Research Paper

Scientific Racism in Germany

It was primarily in Germany, however, where racist science and scientific anti-Semitism took root. In a book entitled Darwin, Deutschland und die Juden, the author demanded to take into account “the findings of the Darwinian doctrine” and stated that “a struggle for survival was taking place between a productive GermanoAryan race and parasitary Semites, thus promulgation of an anti-Judaic legislation was scientifically justified” (Beta, 1876, p. 11 ). Eugenics had become a respectable branch of medicine, resulting in outcries of deep anxiety about the fatal threat of Jews to the Aryan race. Fisher announced “with an absolute certainty” the extinction of all European peoples in the absence of a coherent race policy. In the same year, a society, among others, was established under the name Deutschbund which focused on “the eradication of the inferior elements of the population” and “the struggle against the Jewish and Slavic bloods” (Poliakov,1987, p. 338).

Heinrich von Treitschke (1834-1896) wrote that the white race was the aristocracy of human kind, and called on it to share the planet. The value of each western nation would be determined by the extent of the foreign land they mastered. This colonial rivalry between the Aryans was necessary, for “nations could not prosper without intense competition, like the struggle for survival of Darwin” (see Poliakov, p. 343). As a result, Treitschke paid almost religious tribute to war, which was echoed by Friedrich von Bernhardi (1849-1930), who considered war as “an indispensable factor of civilization” and “a biological necessity of first order” (see Poliakov,1987, p. 344). Josef Reimer described how to organize Germany into the master of Europe and Siberia. The population of this space would be divided between Germans and Germanisable elements on the one hand, and those nonGermanisable on the other. Jews and Slavs fell within the latter category of those who were to be excluded from the Germanic community of procreation (extra connubio) and their procreation be prohibited as the case may be (extirpatio) (Poliakov,1987).

Paul de Lagarde (1827-1891), who became one of the prophets of a new religion under the Third Reich, envisaged a political program for the Prussian conservative party: the annihilation of various Slavic peoples-”this burden of history … the sooner they perished the better for them and for us”; he expressed the same wish for the Hungarian people, “condemned to disappear for the additional reason that it was an old people of Turanian race, hence not better than the Turks and Lapons” (see Poliakov, 1987, p. 351). He likened Jews to bacilIus and trichinae and said that one should not negotiate with them, but exterminate them. Hitler reformulated this statement in 1942: “The war that we wage is of the same nature as the one which Pasteur and Koch did a century ago.” Before Hitler, from Thomas Carlyle to Thomas Mann, Lagarde had many admirers.